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Housework is therapeutic (unless you are a housewife and/or you have to do it for a living). I mopped the floor with a solution of bleach and felt my anxiety dissipating. Then I had a comforting meal of Ligo sardines, rice (ran out of bread and bought plain rice from the canteen next door), and raw lettuce (I save myself the effort of making vegetables attractive to me and just eat them raw). I had a good nap, a phone conversation with a friend whose hypochondria has been cured by the pandemic (Why worry about getting sick when everyone is doing the same thing?), and a writing workshop session on Zoom. I walked 3km inside my apartment.

By the time I sat down to my Eric Rohmer movie (20 down, 5 to go), I was in good spirits. The thing is to do something, anything, to take my mind off my mind.

There is one Eric Rohmer movie that I cannot watch. I saw it for the first time the other day, and I thought I’d seen all of them. The Tree, The Mayor, and the Mediatheque is every bit as exciting as its title. A newly-elected mayor talks about his plan to bring the city to the country by building a media and sports complex, and won’t shut up. Yes, it’s about a construction project, and a lot of people have their hackles up because the parking lot will be filled with hideous cars, hideous! The architect should know better than to design that atrocity, mon Dieu! It shall be the downfall of French culture, and by the way the noun “covid” is feminine en francais even if it is commonly referred to as “le covid”. With another hour left to listen to people moan about the bureaucracy, je quit.

Luckily the next two movies in chronological order were my favorite Rohmers: A Summer’s Tale, and Autumn Tale. They’re from the Tales of Four Seasons, which I now like better than his Six Moral Tales. The Seasons movies are just as chatty, but they’re looser, less self-consciously intellectual, and funnier. The characters still sound like they’re reading from their philo assignments, but they acknowledge that they’re taking themselves too seriously, and life takes them down a notch.

In A Summer’s Tale, Gaspard, a recent graduate in math who is into music, goes to Brittany hoping to see his sort-of girlfriend Lena. There’s no word from Lena, but he is befriended by Margot, an ethnologist working as a waitress. Through her he meets Solene, who pursues him. They collaborate on a song, but Gaspard knows he’s interested in her because she’s interested in him. And then Lena shows up but is still non-commital, and he gets along so well with Margot they really should date. Decisions, decisions. It’s similar to the situation in My Night at Maud’s, where the guy sleeps in the same bed as his smart, beautiful, single and interested hostess but won’t make a move because he is faithful to his ideal girl whom he’s only seen from a distance. Only less annoying.

Margot is played by the wonderful Amanda Langlet, who in her teens starred in Pauline at the Beach. Can’t wait for Autumn Tale, which stars two other Rohmer regulars, Marie Riviere and Beatrice Romand.